Teacher Discussion Forums

i am researching how partitives (a pinch of salt, three jars of jam) and collectives (gaggle of geese) can be difficult for ESL students. is there anyone who has some ideas for how to each these two parts of speech? (any level of proficiency and at any age) or stories to share?

i appreciate all input!

What's the collective noun for "a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the sea"?

A "good start"!


... I should provide a reference for that "joke", but I don't remember where I first heard it. Sorry (for the bad memory and the joke)!

On a more serious note, I don't really see that learning collectives would be any more "difficult" than learning any other new vocabulary - the only problem being that of finding suitable contexts to teach and use the new expressions.

With the exception of the most common examples (herd of cows, flock of sheep, pack of wolves/dogs, flock of birds etc), I'm not really sure that it's necessary to acquire them either as active or even passive vocabulary because who, apart from crossword- and puzzle-writers, uses them?

The partitives are a slightly different kettle of fish (partitive? collective? ) because I imagine that they're in rather more common use. I still don't think they're a problem, though. I'd guess that native-speakers of English pick these things up as lexical phrases (stored as one "chunk" in the memory or lexicon or whatever-you-want-to-call-it), and learners of English can do the same.

Perhaps others can be of more assistance?